I most fault poor government leadership as being responsible for problems of the following kinds:
1) Not having sufficient supplies of all kinds, including hospital beds, ventilators, and tests.
2) Not having enough trained personnel.
3) Not having a way to keep people fed, housed, and cared for during a mandatory lockdown. This might include actual food deliveries to everyone.
4) Not sufficiently studying viral/bacterial disease transmission, pandemics, control measures, and the infection disease processes, and not sharing this information transparently. (What was wrong with the Chinese tests that the US refused? And what exactly is the reliability of these tests? What social measures produce the most benefit?)
5) Not ensuring universal sick leave and healthcare
6) Not reproducing social graces (such as coughing into your sleeve, not going to work sick) and good health practices (getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, proper nutrition). I've been complaining about these things, as related to respiratory diseases in particular, for years and notably just back in January regarding travel I made in December, where a nearby passenger was coughing continuously, which she just wrote off as "COPD." I believe I got sick twice from a boss who was coughing constantly, which he wrote off as "allergies." I find it curious that these things were happening to me in the two years prior to COVID-19. People had gotten so lax--and that probably explains a lot of how this pandemic started. I have had a number of very bad colds, so bad I might have wished they were flus. Notably that was occurring to me around 2007-2009. A lot of those were exacerbated by my own poor behaviors, often not getting enough sleep (I could almost foresee getting sick every time I stayed up way too late, which I was often doing in those years, when I was still living like a highly paid adolescent).
7) Not starting to measure everyone's temperature going into large gatherings or public transportation.
I would fault governments less for not ordering mandatory lockdowns. If the people aren't being provided for, it's actually the people who are sacrificing of themselves to do that. Merely ordering a lockdown represents pretty close to a zero on the government's side. Actually having prepared for it, and managing it, and thereby making it a success is something else--the kind of government we don't usually see.
I'm not at all happy about giant corporate slush funds as a way of "managing the crisis." That's managing the economic crisis for a few fat cats who intend still to be on top afterwards--and possibly more so.
Leaders should understand that a $1200 check might help with food and such for a few weeks, but it's nothing like a replacement income for most people, who on average earn about that much every week and now could be looking at months or years (?) of unemployment. Weeks seems a lot too small if this is anything like the crisis the media keeps describing. Months seems to have worked in China, which had a response no capitalist country can match. I hope, along the lines of all the arguments I've made previously, that the media is wrong about this, and that it is actually more in line with pandemics we've seen before like the recent SARS and H1N1, especially after the paltry (and sometimes of negative benefit) measures we've applied so far--still more than was ever done before. But the precautionary argument is that even if the media has overblown this, which I believe is likely, it still may be bigger than we've seen in a long time and will exhaust our already overloaded medical industry in some places, so extreme measures like lockdowns may make sense in some places at some times. The media can certainly endlessly cite apparently authoritative sources justifying extreme measures.. Are there qualified people who think differently? From my sources, I believe so, and I'd love to see debates with few boundaries, like the ancient Royal Society, along with a little less concern about shielding the public from uncertainty through vetting. That uncertainty is getting through anyway, leaving us with no way to judge (while I suppose I could spend more time reading freely available scientific publications...you could say "my" lack of being informed is my fault...but even reading scientific papers is nothing like debate...and one could argue that even published papers reflect the establishment concerns because they paid for it).
It irks me more than a little when the needs of people to get out and make a living are simply shuffled off as business concerns or economics concerns--which are certainly not as important as life. Many people nowadays don't have a big business employer, who might have a huge slush fund of money in foreign banks. They are self-employed, gig workers, people who live on tips, and small business owners who don't have a giant cushion of savings to rely on. A complete lockdown or even social distancing will mean economic catastrophe to many, and will cost lives as well as creating destitution, just as Trump says. Notably, people in these categories tend to be Trumpers themselves, and think Trump is very doing well by promising (so far) to keep the state of emergency limited, as compared with many Democrats implicitly calling for complete lockdown now which could last months, or whatever some particular medical authority says. For various philosophical reasons, we can argue that life is more important than anything, but this quickly collapses to absurdity if taken to extreme. Balance requires considering many factors including total lives spared as well as the quality and duration of lives lost or spared. There may be nothing that justifies saving the wealth of the obscenely wealthy, ethically they might as well give it all to save just one old sick person (and sometimes do, if it is the same wealthy person) but obscene sacrifices by many many non-wealthy people may not be justified to save only a few very sick people who were about to die anyway and spare them just for a few more months. Is that the case this time? I doubt it and fear intense if not extreme measures may be justified, but most of the sacrificing should be done at the top--which is unlikely. Rich people naturally command a capitalist economy, and if it doesn't work out, they should be the first to pay for that failure, but rarely do. Given that the rich won't in fact pay for it, I don't think it's ethical to burden the non-wealthy too much either. There is life, and then there is living. That has always been my line, and I'm sticking to it. Where the balance is, needs to be a matter of great, informed, and unlimited debate every time--it is not simple. But most of the debate doesn't happen, instead people simply stereotype their adversaries as either bleeding hearts or business shills and so we have division without rationality, which tends to work to the advantage of the business shills, they always seem to win at the name calling game. We the others should have a better game, generally.
As a fully retired and debt free homeowning person, I do not personally need a supplemental income stream. But I feel very much for those who do, and where this is going for them, and the future of my country.
This is not to say all social security recipients are in my nice boat. Many many have "retirement jobs," in fact nearly everyone I know (except me) does. My mother worked to age 76. My brother-in-law is still working at 80 plus. And if they don't, their whole ship may sink under mortgages and other loans. This is because they don't have paid off everything like me.
Therefore, it seems to me, one of the best things governments could do would be defer all debts and rent payments while a person remains unemployed. And when that person gets employment again, payments resume with the same size payments, not a lump sum back payments which they can't possibly meet.
Then what about the modest landlords who live on rents? Yes, that's part of the problem every layer of society pretty much lives paycheck to paycheck just with different kind of paycheck. So the whole house of cards collapses if you pull one card from the bottom.
But anyway, people who live on rents would have their rents and debts deferred also.
But if we're tossing around trilions, it surely would be better for government to pay everyone's rent or mortgage and other debts for the duration of their unemployment, than to inject trillions at the top.
This is not to say I wouldn't support the most radical idea of all, a debt jubilee. I merely can't conceive of it happening. Yet.
Free government-paid treatment of COVID-19 would be a good idea also, not to mention healthcare as a right.
Speaking of negative benefits, they include these:
1) Panic crowds at stores with key items sold out (Limits should have been in place months ago, along with mandated production of key items.)
2) Doctors closing (so you need to go to overloaded urgent care centers which may be full of infected people).
3) Obsessive measures which cause more damage than they are intended to prevent. I still believe most of the concerns about sterilizing everything continually, even your own phone, are overblown, waste time, and distract from more useful measures. It's possible the current procedures for dealing with COVID-19 require too many facemasks (over a dozen, I've read) to be practical and use up limited supplies of facemasks.
1) Not having sufficient supplies of all kinds, including hospital beds, ventilators, and tests.
2) Not having enough trained personnel.
3) Not having a way to keep people fed, housed, and cared for during a mandatory lockdown. This might include actual food deliveries to everyone.
4) Not sufficiently studying viral/bacterial disease transmission, pandemics, control measures, and the infection disease processes, and not sharing this information transparently. (What was wrong with the Chinese tests that the US refused? And what exactly is the reliability of these tests? What social measures produce the most benefit?)
5) Not ensuring universal sick leave and healthcare
6) Not reproducing social graces (such as coughing into your sleeve, not going to work sick) and good health practices (getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, proper nutrition). I've been complaining about these things, as related to respiratory diseases in particular, for years and notably just back in January regarding travel I made in December, where a nearby passenger was coughing continuously, which she just wrote off as "COPD." I believe I got sick twice from a boss who was coughing constantly, which he wrote off as "allergies." I find it curious that these things were happening to me in the two years prior to COVID-19. People had gotten so lax--and that probably explains a lot of how this pandemic started. I have had a number of very bad colds, so bad I might have wished they were flus. Notably that was occurring to me around 2007-2009. A lot of those were exacerbated by my own poor behaviors, often not getting enough sleep (I could almost foresee getting sick every time I stayed up way too late, which I was often doing in those years, when I was still living like a highly paid adolescent).
7) Not starting to measure everyone's temperature going into large gatherings or public transportation.
I would fault governments less for not ordering mandatory lockdowns. If the people aren't being provided for, it's actually the people who are sacrificing of themselves to do that. Merely ordering a lockdown represents pretty close to a zero on the government's side. Actually having prepared for it, and managing it, and thereby making it a success is something else--the kind of government we don't usually see.
I'm not at all happy about giant corporate slush funds as a way of "managing the crisis." That's managing the economic crisis for a few fat cats who intend still to be on top afterwards--and possibly more so.
Leaders should understand that a $1200 check might help with food and such for a few weeks, but it's nothing like a replacement income for most people, who on average earn about that much every week and now could be looking at months or years (?) of unemployment. Weeks seems a lot too small if this is anything like the crisis the media keeps describing. Months seems to have worked in China, which had a response no capitalist country can match. I hope, along the lines of all the arguments I've made previously, that the media is wrong about this, and that it is actually more in line with pandemics we've seen before like the recent SARS and H1N1, especially after the paltry (and sometimes of negative benefit) measures we've applied so far--still more than was ever done before. But the precautionary argument is that even if the media has overblown this, which I believe is likely, it still may be bigger than we've seen in a long time and will exhaust our already overloaded medical industry in some places, so extreme measures like lockdowns may make sense in some places at some times. The media can certainly endlessly cite apparently authoritative sources justifying extreme measures.. Are there qualified people who think differently? From my sources, I believe so, and I'd love to see debates with few boundaries, like the ancient Royal Society, along with a little less concern about shielding the public from uncertainty through vetting. That uncertainty is getting through anyway, leaving us with no way to judge (while I suppose I could spend more time reading freely available scientific publications...you could say "my" lack of being informed is my fault...but even reading scientific papers is nothing like debate...and one could argue that even published papers reflect the establishment concerns because they paid for it).
It irks me more than a little when the needs of people to get out and make a living are simply shuffled off as business concerns or economics concerns--which are certainly not as important as life. Many people nowadays don't have a big business employer, who might have a huge slush fund of money in foreign banks. They are self-employed, gig workers, people who live on tips, and small business owners who don't have a giant cushion of savings to rely on. A complete lockdown or even social distancing will mean economic catastrophe to many, and will cost lives as well as creating destitution, just as Trump says. Notably, people in these categories tend to be Trumpers themselves, and think Trump is very doing well by promising (so far) to keep the state of emergency limited, as compared with many Democrats implicitly calling for complete lockdown now which could last months, or whatever some particular medical authority says. For various philosophical reasons, we can argue that life is more important than anything, but this quickly collapses to absurdity if taken to extreme. Balance requires considering many factors including total lives spared as well as the quality and duration of lives lost or spared. There may be nothing that justifies saving the wealth of the obscenely wealthy, ethically they might as well give it all to save just one old sick person (and sometimes do, if it is the same wealthy person) but obscene sacrifices by many many non-wealthy people may not be justified to save only a few very sick people who were about to die anyway and spare them just for a few more months. Is that the case this time? I doubt it and fear intense if not extreme measures may be justified, but most of the sacrificing should be done at the top--which is unlikely. Rich people naturally command a capitalist economy, and if it doesn't work out, they should be the first to pay for that failure, but rarely do. Given that the rich won't in fact pay for it, I don't think it's ethical to burden the non-wealthy too much either. There is life, and then there is living. That has always been my line, and I'm sticking to it. Where the balance is, needs to be a matter of great, informed, and unlimited debate every time--it is not simple. But most of the debate doesn't happen, instead people simply stereotype their adversaries as either bleeding hearts or business shills and so we have division without rationality, which tends to work to the advantage of the business shills, they always seem to win at the name calling game. We the others should have a better game, generally.
As a fully retired and debt free homeowning person, I do not personally need a supplemental income stream. But I feel very much for those who do, and where this is going for them, and the future of my country.
This is not to say all social security recipients are in my nice boat. Many many have "retirement jobs," in fact nearly everyone I know (except me) does. My mother worked to age 76. My brother-in-law is still working at 80 plus. And if they don't, their whole ship may sink under mortgages and other loans. This is because they don't have paid off everything like me.
Therefore, it seems to me, one of the best things governments could do would be defer all debts and rent payments while a person remains unemployed. And when that person gets employment again, payments resume with the same size payments, not a lump sum back payments which they can't possibly meet.
Then what about the modest landlords who live on rents? Yes, that's part of the problem every layer of society pretty much lives paycheck to paycheck just with different kind of paycheck. So the whole house of cards collapses if you pull one card from the bottom.
But anyway, people who live on rents would have their rents and debts deferred also.
But if we're tossing around trilions, it surely would be better for government to pay everyone's rent or mortgage and other debts for the duration of their unemployment, than to inject trillions at the top.
This is not to say I wouldn't support the most radical idea of all, a debt jubilee. I merely can't conceive of it happening. Yet.
Free government-paid treatment of COVID-19 would be a good idea also, not to mention healthcare as a right.
Speaking of negative benefits, they include these:
1) Panic crowds at stores with key items sold out (Limits should have been in place months ago, along with mandated production of key items.)
2) Doctors closing (so you need to go to overloaded urgent care centers which may be full of infected people).
3) Obsessive measures which cause more damage than they are intended to prevent. I still believe most of the concerns about sterilizing everything continually, even your own phone, are overblown, waste time, and distract from more useful measures. It's possible the current procedures for dealing with COVID-19 require too many facemasks (over a dozen, I've read) to be practical and use up limited supplies of facemasks.
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